June292017

I Must Be Dead (McKay Jaffe) is a Phoenix-based photographer creating mind-blowing portraits of unusual characters. Using body paint and makeup, he and the subjects construct scenes of fantasy and nightmare, invoking conflicting feelings of sensuality, intrigue, and unease. Subversive by nature—for example, Jaffe views being human as a “program,” wherein people are “designed to act and feel relative to the life [they] are given”—his portraits are experiments in identity, each bold face showing us the power and creativity that lies outside the boundaries of normalcy.

June162017

16:49

In her ongoing series aptly titled “Where the Wild Things Are,” Los Angeles-based photographer Natasha Wilson shines a light on the ethereal beauty of wildlife saved from entering the black market trade.
The wild animal black market involves the capturing and selling of animals with the intent to house the undomesticated creatures as pets. Before being sold however, the animals are imprinted by humans, meaning their natural instincts such as hunting is trained out of them, making it impossible for them to survive in the wild.

May222017

May172017

17:18

Michael Reedy draws moody anatomy illustrations with a pop-surrealist flair. Juxtaposing cartoonish and psychedelic elements with photorealistic bodies that have been flayed and cut open, his works create an emotional yet unsettling atmosphere. As he explains on his website, his more recent works revisit “the timeless themes of life, death, and the human condition.” Not interested in showing human life in a reductionist manner, he blends tragedy with comedy, innocence with corruption, and beauty with pain in order to tell poetic (and sometimes uncomfortable) tales of growth and transition.

April132017

March312017

11:36

For Hungarian photographer Peter Zelei, there is no “black and white” when it comes to humanity; “I believe … we are a very complicated mix of good, bad, darkness and light,” he explained in an interview with Citizen Brooklyn. His photographs are filled with beauty and cruelty, with scenes and scenarios that simultaneously enchant and disturb the psyche.

February242017

The fascinating scans come from an alphabet picture book published around 1931, allegedly to fight widespread illiteracy across the vast Soviet territories. It was drawn by no less than Sergey Merkurov, the former People’s Artist of the USSR and an academic at the Soviet Academy of Arts.